I'm working on a game about adventurers that meet in a tavern, only after the rest of their party has died. You'll tell your tales of woe, trying to get the tavern patrons to buy your drink for you. If you drink too much of the bad alcohol you might die at the end of the night!

I'm basing the game and the play off "Another Irish Drinking Song" by Da Vinci's Notebook and that means I have to adapt the song. I'm not a lyricist by any stretch but I'm trying. This is what I have so far, I'm about half way done.

Gather round ye lads and lasses
Set ye for lark
And hearken to me mournful tale about the dungeon dark
Let's all raise our glasses high to friends and family gone
And lift our voices in another adventurer's drinking song

Zombies took me mother and
Me father found a trap
Me brother drank the whisky till he was killed taking a nap
Me other brother in The Underdark met with his demise
Me sister has forever closed her undead detecting eyes

Now everybody's died
So, until our tears have dried
We'll drink and drink and drink and drink and then we'll drink some more
We'll dance and sing and fight until the early morning light
Then we'll throw up, pass out, wake up, and then go drinking once again

The vampire was winnin' at poker until they raised the stakes
The doppelganger had it good but they pinned him as a fake
Arigone's torch burned up the oxygen and now his air is gone
Hamish Triphammer dropped his hammer when he saw a fright
He stubbed his toe and fell down a pit until he was out of sight

Earl played in a staring contest with a basilisk and won
'cause his eyes are rock and now he weighs a ton.
Merden thought that water wet the floor
His fireball hit the oil and was blown out of the door.

Now everybody's died
So, until our tears have dried
We'll drink and drink and drink and drink and then we'll drink some more
We'll dance and sing and fight until the early morning light
Then we'll throw up, pass out, wake up, and then go drinking once again

I need to finish the song but if anyone wants to throw in lyrics I'll happily credit you for them. I'd also like to do a sci-fi version.

Last edited by Emmett on Thu Aug 22, 2019 8:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

I've got to get my nose to the grindstone and get this written out. I have the basic idea of what I want. You tell a tale of one of your companions dying and then the other players challenge you with dance, fight or sing. Each one challenging your honor in a different way. It would be a very Baron Munchausen like. The stakes are that you're trying to get the bar patrons to buy your drink and at the end of the night you either throw up (become ill and die), pass out (and end your adventuring days) or wake up (and return to adventure).

The bad thing is I keep having the description of each challenge pop into my head and then I forget how it's supposed to go. From what I remember, dance is you have to prove you could have escaped the same fate as your friend with agility or speed. The idea being that you were too far away, cowering to begin with and let your friend die because you weren't there to help them. The fight challenge is similar but that you would have had to use strength or fighting skill to escape the fate of your friend. Maybe you pushed them into danger so that you could escape. Sing is an interesting one that I'm having trouble describing. The idea is that you need to express your heartfelt feelings for your friend, maybe expressing a secret love to prove you didn't just hate them in the first place.

Each one of those is going to be tricky to describe. I also want to make it so a group that's good at coming up with challenges in one avenue don't just spam that button. To do that, I want the player telling the tale to have a secret but random weakness to one. That could be as simple as rolling a d6 with a third of the results going to each. Maybe a d4 with a fourth option being some kind of wildcard?

It's all pretty simple except for getting the descriptions of the challenges right. If they're not well understood, the players will be prompting the wrong questions.

Update, I've been trying to get the other players involved in the description of your fallen comrades. The idea is to inject some fun in the process and give helpful prompts to the player that has to generate a character on the spot. I had it suggested to me to use a mad-libs style word insert. After trying to create something that does this, I think it's the wrong way to go. It would probably bring what's already a zany game over the top.

What I'm trying next is a drafting process where the other players suggest prompts to the current player and they reward the player's who's prompt they like best. The reward might be in pennies (the in game currency) but that might break the economy as I have it at the moment. It might be something I can adjust for though, I'll have to see.